It has recently and rightly been observed that Plutarch is exceptional as a prose author in the finesse with which he employs tragedy in his Lives. And, one might add, in the extent to which he does so. His dislike for the sensationalism of ‘tragic history’ was no obstacle to his use of ‘the sustained tragic patterning and imagery which is a perfectly respectable feature of both biography and history’. The primary purpose of the present discussion is to draw attention (...) to the profound importance of tragedy, particularly of Euripides' Bacchae, to the Carrhae narrative in Plutarch's Crassus. It is argued that details in Crassus'; version of Carrhae recall the tragedy of Pentheus and, in so doing, substantially advance the portrayal of Crassus' character. (shrink)

The purpose of this short note is to explain a joke in Aristophanes, Wasps. If the explanation is accepted, our knowledge of Athenian political and military history in the later 420s is enhanced.

Procopius states that the Colchian Lazi had neither salt nor grain nor any other good thing; for this reason they always engaged in trade with the Romans around the Black Sea.